Star Trek, JJ Abrams, 2009
First things first: I'm not a die hard Trekkie, although I do like to watch the original series for camp value (it's almost as good as Batman for that.) I also don't watch Lost and didn't watch Alias, so I have no particular feelings towards JJ Abrams.
So I am not one of the all people for whom this movie must be all things. But I thought it was pretty damn fantastic.
What do we require of a summer blockbuster? It should look like the millions of bucks it undoubtedly cost to create. (If you too, had the misfortune of seeing the GI Joe and Transformers 2 trailers that I did, you'll know that this doesn't always pan out.) But boy does it ever here. The whole picture looked sleek and shiny and expensive, and if the series is using the same quality sets, we're in for a real treat. Something Abrams did a lot was show us slow-motion explosions or battles in space, all of which were beautiful on that breathtaking, Battlestar Galactica level.
Remaking a popular franchise also requires that you walk a fine line between giving the fans what they want and making the material your own. I thought that the through the wormhole of time reboot they accomlished here was a wonderfully audacious (and surprisingly coherent) move, one that gives them a lot of room to explore new storylines.
I found the cast, down to a man, exceedingly winning. Let's just call a spade a spade: Chris Pine can act circles sround Shatner on one leg and with a paper bag over his head. Hopefully he will have neither of these handicaps while romancing hot alien babes across the galaxy, a premise that sounds thrilling and remarkably easy on the eyes. Pine is just the right kind of appealingly cocky, he's a wiseass hero you can root for. Plus he takes that Shatner trademark of staring steelily into middle distance and makes it completely his own.
My heart, however, has always belonged to Spock, and to my mind Zachary Quinto knocked this one out of the park. It's quite a challenge, really, to take a character who's by nature clinical and cold and make you believe he's going through moments of extreme emotional vulnerability, and I thought he completely sold it, and made your heart break for him. The love story was done with a refreshingly light touch, and I was left hoping for more out of the relationship in the series. I've always thought Zoe Saldana was a sadly underused actress, and she really gets to shine here. I like that Uhura's a good girl who (mostly) follows the rules, but she's never portrayed as a boring stick in the mud.
What else? I was actually really sad when Vulcan got destroyed, because that shit was dazzlingly beautiful. Simon Pegg was absolutely fantastic, but did we expect anything less?
Comments